


Sailing to Byzantium

by miabicicletta



Category: Oxford Time Travel Universe - Connie Willis
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-08
Updated: 2012-11-08
Packaged: 2017-11-18 05:45:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/557544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miabicicletta/pseuds/miabicicletta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He steps over the threshold and is immediately pulled into the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sailing to Byzantium

**Author's Note:**

> Post _All Clear_. Title comes from the eponymous Yeats poem [Sailing to Byzantium](%E2%80%9Chttp//www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20310%E2%80%9D). For [](http://idella.livejournal.com/)**idella** and [](http://seirina.livejournal.com/)**seirina** , who are lovely and make sketching out these foolish imaginings of my wildly overactive imagination just about the most fun ever. For those who have not read the Doomsday Book, young Colin Templer is fond of declaring just about everything he finds distasteful as “absolutely necrotic!”

\---

He steps over the threshold and is immediately pulled into the past. 

The room is exactly as Colin Templer remembers it: Shelves precariously stacked, books upon books upon books. Dusty volumes of Gibson, leather bound and teetering, densely detailing the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. A massive tome of the Norman Invasion sits solidly between a set of Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christies, and the entire lower shelf is dedicated to the French Revolution, which, when he was young, he once poured through searching for the goriest of the guillotine lithographs. There are a series of texts on the ports and paths of the spice trade through the Far East beside several conflicting accounts of Alexander the Great’s conquest of Asia Minor. On the wall opposite two great, filthy glass windows hangs a framed sketch of a Christopher Wren church in the City. Above the desk, a mottled map of 14th century France.

He might be 12 years old again but for the thick blanket of dust coating everything in sight, and a sweet, musty taste to the air that betrayed the room's long vacancy. No one — save perhaps a few mice, or the ancient Warden, who occasioned to confuse one Balliol College corridor for another — had stepped foot in this office for over ten years.

Colin blinks in the direct sunlight, remembering the last time he saw this room. 

The last time he stood here, at the foot of the wide, antiquated (what else?) desk, (which had always seemed, to his teenage eyes, the judge's bench beore which his fate within the Oxford History Department would, one auspicious day, be decided) he had been attempting to make his case for the umpteenth time for why he should be allowed to time travel, department rules and requirements be damned. Why he needed to spend eight years in the past. His arguments said nothing of, yet had everything to do with, catching up in age to a pretty, dark haired historian who knew Shakespeare backwards and studied the everyday heroes throughout English history. How young he had been, then. 

A cloud moves across the sun, and a shadow falls quickly across the room, muddling the bright room with a moment’s umbrage. He had last been here the same week that James Dunworthy and Polly Churchill had both vanished. Lost to history. 

_Like Michael Davies and Merope Ward_. He brushes the thought aside. The memories are too fresh for how far gone they seem. Colin had been 17 when last stood before this desk, in this room. He’s 27 now. 

_No_ , he realizes, as the light returns in full. _I’m 28._ It is October. His birthday was three weeks ago. He’d forgotten.

Opposite, the only other figure in the room stands on the far side of the desk, facing the map. 

“I’ve been looking through your academic files, Mr. Templer,” Mr. Dunworthy says, breaking the silence. At the sound of his stern-yet-quiet voice, Colin is suddenly stricken by such a profound wave of deja vu that he can nearly taste a gobstopper in his mouth. 

Mr. Dunworthy turns, face impassive as ever. He closes the book in his hands, places it on the desk, and pulls out several more, which he stacks neatly and pushes to the side. Colin takes a seat as the newly returned Head of History eases into his creaky chair. 

Dunworthy flicks open a file. “Over forty research-based drops to the end of the 20th century. Newspaper archives, museum openings, anniversary gatherings, funerals and weddings of, not to mention memorial dedications to, British participants of World War II.”

 _Fifty-seven_ , Colin mentally tallies. 

“Half a dozen level ten events including the Blitz, the V-1 rocket attacks, the firewatch at St. Paul’s,” Mr. Dunworthy ticks off. He sighs at the last one, rubbing the bridge of his nose. 

He appears stronger than he had the night Colin had found them in April 1941 and brought them back through the net. But he also looks older than Colin can ever remember. And though ten years had passed in the present, only seven months had passed for the Head of History. The difference should not have been quite so...pronounced.

“You read our death notices,” Dunworthy says simply. “Mine and Miss Churchill’s. And yet you kept searching. I find that kind of faith...extraordinary. And somewhat hard to reconcile, given the evidence at hand.”

“A very wise man once pointed out,” Colin feels the corner of his mouth twitch, “that I have a tendency to ignore what I’m told.”

Dunworthy snorts. “Indeed.” He adjusts his glasses and leaned back, the ghost of a smile on his face. “And rightly so. I have never had a more exuberant and irrational student, and you had not even been admitted to Oxford yet.”

The smile fades as his gaze falls to the window and beyond, where the dreaming spires of Oxford shone with the last light of late autumn sun.

“Ten years,” Mr. Dunworthy says, quiet with awe. “What could have possessed you?” 

Colin can no more put words to it than he imagines Marco Polo could have explained what compelled him to seek out the treasures of the Orient. What brought Jack Cargraves to Mars. Why Vespucci, Magellan, Shackleton and Cook all longed to explore the world before the world was fully known. There weren’t words enough to explain. He could never have found them all. 

It doesn't matter. He only needs the one. 

_Her_ , Colin thinks, because of all the reasons – guilt and gallantry; grief and a wild, pure, hopeless desire – it is the truest. He has lived a hundred lives since he was the boy who had once stood in this office, since he was the child infamous for having stolen away to the Black Death. Since then he’s been Connor Cross and Calvin Knight, been Christian Calder and Colin Churchill. 

He’s traveled to the past and lead a lone crusade with sparse allies in times and places he had never prepared for. It's been just over ten years, but Colin feels like a century has gone by since he last felt young. Since Polly vanished one Thursday afternoon and took his promise with her. His promise to love her forever. His promise to come and find her, save her if she was ever hurt, or in trouble. His promise to marry her one day. 

“I love her,” Colin says simply, feeling a greater weight than 28 years could carry.

Mr. Dunworthy, to his credit, does not scoff or roll his eyes, only nods, exactly once, and closes the file before him.

“Contrary to all my expectations, Mr. Templer,” Mr. Dunworthy says. “You have become a fine historian. A fine historian indeed.”

Colin can do little but dip his head in humble thanks. He could acquire ever degree Oxford had to offer and it would not matter. To a particular order of historians, of which Colin was one of the last, precious few, there was no higher accolade one might earn than the earnest praise of Dr. James Dunworthy. 

“I’ve spoken with your advisors. We have the matter of your next project to discuss,” Dunworthy says, standing and returning to his box of books and stacks of papers. “However...” He indicates out the window to the green quad below, where Polly Churchill is sitting on a bench in the sunshine. “You’ve waited long enough, I think.” 

Colin watches her, his heart lifting as it alway did to see her. Polly lay her head back against the stone wall, soaking in the last of the day’s light. Her skirt spread out across her knees below the book in her hand. She had kicked off one shoe, playing at one ankle with a bare foot...

“For _now_ ," Mr. Dunworthy says, cocking an eyebrow, a knowing smiling playing at one corner of his mouth.

“Of course, sir. I take it you have an assignment in mind?” Colin asks, rising to his feet.

“Oh yes, ‘To keep a drowsy Emperor awake,’” Mr. Dunworthy replies and does the same. “I intend to set you and Ms. Churchill both ‘upon a golden bough to sing.’”

A smile blooms across his face as the meaning registers. Crooking his neck, Colin takes in the titles on the bindings Dunworthy has been removing from storage. His smile grows wider. 

“I look forward to it, sir,” he says, still grinning as Mr. Dunworthy outlines a series of meetings that begin in a week's time, and once he’s gotten the dates down, he turns to leave. 

“And Mr. Templer?” Mr. Dunworthy calls as Colin reaches the door. “I would like to remind you what a young historian of Balliol once said. Love is...” he pulled a face, “absolutely _necrotic_.”

Colin’s laughter is louder than Mr. Dunworthy’s, echoing across the quad even after he’s slung his arm around Polly Churchill and they’ve slipped out of Balliol’s gate together, but both men’s joy is true, and sincere. 

“What did he say?” Polly asks as they walk home. Her look is curious and bemused.

Colin smiles, squeezing her arm. “He said we’re to give our regards ‘to the lords and ladies of Byzantium.” 

Polly grins as they make their way through the streets of Oxford.

“‘Of what is past, or passing, or to come.’”

\---

_To keep a drowsy Emperor awake_  
Or set upon a golden bough to sing  
To lords and ladies of Byzantium  
Of what is past, or passing, or to come. 

-William Butler Yeats, _Sailing to Byzantium_


End file.
